


I Have Swallowed an Iron Moon

by Byacolate



Category: Elder Scrolls, Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Genre: Bloodmoon DLC, Established Relationship, M/M, Reincarnation, Snow Elves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-15
Updated: 2018-07-15
Packaged: 2019-06-10 14:24:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15293463
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Byacolate/pseuds/Byacolate
Summary: Trust an alchemist to complicate a bath with flowers.





	I Have Swallowed an Iron Moon

**Author's Note:**

  * For [scoobertdoobert](https://archiveofourown.org/users/scoobertdoobert/gifts).



> A commission for scoobertdoobert, for whom I'd cry over a thousand years of Elder Scrolls lore.

He hadn't been so far from the Rift in months. Markarth was precisely as cold and unfriendly as he remembered, even within the firelit halls of the Silver-Blood Inn. A priestess of Dibella gave him a smile in passing, but not without intent; his companion seemed to be too preoccupied with his supper to notice.

 

“How is the crostata?” he asked, leaning over to bump shoulders. The priestess took the hint and moved closer to the fire, palms outstretched.

 

“It will suffice.” Yrwe neatly cut the pastry in half, trapping the untouched portion between utensils to pass over to Omrue’s empty plate. There was no crisp sound to the cutting, and sure enough when Omrue took a bite the pastry was chewy and the filling more sugar than jazbay. Even so, food was food. Omrue finished his half in two bites and settled in for Yrwe to do the same.

 

He spread his gaze out over the room. A couple of huntresses gathered by the fire, chatting up the Dibellan priestess. A sellsword with a fistful of mead assessed him over the rim of his mug. Omrue offered a winning smile in return. Perhaps the fire’s light reflected off of his tusks in a particularly menacing manner, for the Nord soon turned his gaze elsewhere. To Yrwe.

 

This was not so strange; most looked askance at one so unfamiliar to look upon. Omrue turned his body toward the mercenary and tipped his chin. It was enough to dissuade further examination.

 

Kleppr’s marriage didn't seem much improved since Omrue had last visited the city many years ago; he and his wife maintained a steady banner of revile from the moment they arrived. Even the bard could not drown them out - but they did not fail without a valiant effort.

 

“Do you play?” When his companion looked up, Omrue nodded toward the bard.

 

“The lyre? No.” Yrwe brushed a thumb at the corner of his mouth. “Not for some time. And never well.”

 

“Not a patron of the arts? Some elf you are.” Golden eyes flickered from Omrue to the door.

 

“No… ah…”

 

Omrue looked over his shoulder. A young Nord woman with two children shouldered her way in, the little ones kicking up a fuss about sweet rolls.

 

“Shall we head to our room?” Omrue asked, dragging Yrwe's attention back to himself. It was impossible for that face to grow paler than it was, but his expression was grim. Omrue stood, taking a bottle of wine in each fist. It startled Yrwe into standing as well.

 

“Yes... yes.”

 

He composed himself quickly after the door to their room was tightly sealed. Kleppr, Frabbi, the children, and even the bard became little more than muffled whispers of sound beyond. Markarth architecture, at least, was decent for absorbing noise.

 

Omrue caught Yrwe briefly rubbing a hand over his chest before his expression evened out, and he looked to the bottles.

 

“Shall we…”

 

Omrue grinned around the cork as he sank his teeth in and yanked it free.

  
  
  
  


“Have you ever been to Markarth?” Omrue watched him drink from the bottle, taking pulls like a soldier. “Before.”

 

With the back of his gauntlet, Yrwe wiped under his lips. How he didn't catch his skin on the sharp edges, Omrue didn't know. “No.”

 

“So what do you think of it?”

 

Yrwe leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. He did not look drunk, or even flushed. Omrue handed him another bottle. “What do _you_ think of it?”

 

Omrue shrugged his shoulders as easily as he was able, lounging across the bed as he was. “It's alright. For my tastes, things are built too close and high up. Not much hunting either, for a civilized man. I prefer the Rift.”

 

Yrwe pressed the bottle to his lips. His eyes glowed molten by the light of a dozen candles. Eerie, like a creature in the dark. “There are plenty of beasts to hunt within these walls.”

 

Omrue squinted. Sure, he'd known the bastard for a great enough while, but sometimes he thought Yrwe was hard to read on purpose. When he took notice of Omrue's pursed lips, Yrwe took a deep pull of his wine. Wiped his mouth again. “But I am not a civilized man.”

  
  


 

Omrue broke through his armor like a siege engine. It was like this every time; like Yrwe's armor was his true skin, and to have him Omrue was obliged to shed him like a snake.

 

A shiver ran through Yrwe's body, and Omrue could feel it with a hand pressed to his spine.

 

“Cold?” he teased, mouthing at the salty skin at the dip of Yrwe's throat. A shudder and a hiss met him like one of the Dwemer machines.

 

_“Yes.”_  Yrwe grappled him over, wrestling a laughing Omrue’s back to the bed of stone so he could sit atop. He was right; it was uncomfortably cold against his bare back. Omrue slid his hands over the backs of Yrwe’s thighs, chilly to the touch.

 

“Maybe it’s a bit cold, but aren’t you a snow-”

 

“I am flesh and bone, as any man.”

 

Candlelight made him look pallid and waxy, like an atronach of ivory. The undulation of Yrwe's hips as he moved against Omrue threw shadows over the sculptured muscle of his abdomen in a way that drew his balls up tight. The head of his cock sank deep into Yrwe's body, and he savored it - stilled the movements of Yrwe's hips with a firm hand just to pull himself out and push in again. The long, slow slide was echoed by a long, slow gasp, and Omrue was but a man.

 

By the eve’s end, he clutched at Yrwe's shoulders, both feet planted on stone to drive up into him. The noises in his ear were a constant, a metronome of sighs. With an almighty grunt, Omrue gripped him about the flank and surged upward and over.

 

Yrwe's face drew a snort from Omrue - dazed and dark-eyed, his lips slack. Omrue jerked at the apex of his thighs and pushed his knees apart until Yrwe hissed, and began to fuck him again in earnest.

 

Nails dug into his back, scraping over similar wounds made only a handful of nights before. Omrue grunted and grumbled with his tusks pressed to the cradle of Yrwe's shoulder.

 

“Yes,” Yrwe breathed after Omrue muttered something in his ear. _“Yes,”_  but Omrue didn't even remember the question. It must have been good, as Yrwe gave a little shout and coated Omrue's chest with wet heat.

 

When he came, it was with a dull roar that reminded him how nice the thick stone walls of Markarth really were.

 

He collapsed on top of Yrwe’s long body, and as he suspected, there were no complaints. With a self-satisfied sigh, he picked long strands of white hair from his mouth.

 

“Shall we depart in the morning?” Yrwe grunted.

 

“I dunno. I’m kind of getting used to these stone slabs they call beds.”

 

“I see.” Callused hands drifted from Omrue’s back to the flat of his chest where they shoved him over to the side. Snickering, Omrue gathered Yrwe up in his arms, tangling his tusks yet again in hair. “Then I fear I shall leave you here come morning.”

 

“‘S fine,” Omrue mumbled in the aftermath of a yawn. He nestled his face into Yrwe’s neck to be a brat. “Just don’t forget to tuck me in when you go.”

  
  
  


“Who are you?” were Yrwe’s first words to Omrue, many years ago, though he did not know it then. From his tongue came a language the likes of which Omrue had never heard. An accidental fall had led to meeting the strangest, palest elf he had ever seen - neither Bosmer or Altmer could match his snow white hue, and even Nords could not compete. Stranger still was that he did not understand a word of Tamrielic. Buried under Skyrim’s icy surface, and he did not know a word of the tongue.

 

“Auri-El" Omrue could understand, and the frequency at which the stranger mentioned Him suggested he was a pious man. Then, with some hemming and hawing, he had scrawled something in the ice below their feet.

 

_Yrwedhevuris Naravrin_

 

Omrue could not make heads or tails of such a mouthful until pale fingers pointed to the letters and then tapped at his armored chest.

 

“Yrwedhevuris.” He continued to point to himself before pointing at Omrue, continuing on with a short stream of an unknown tongue. But Omrue figured that he was safe in his assumptions through context.

 

“Omrue,” he answered, patting at his own chest and then scrawling it in ice.

 

“Omrue,” Yrwedhevuris thoughtfully repeated. Omrue grinned.

 

“That's right. And by my calculations, we'll find our way out of here before I remember the novel of _your_ name, so we had best get to moving.”

  
  
  
  


They had traveled to Markarth along the route from Falkreath, where Yrwe had been unimpressed by the famed graveyard. Solitude didn’t amuse him either, though Omrue liked the city a great deal more than Markarth. But it was far too cosmopolitan for either of their tastes, and so they continued east.

 

Omrue did not know why their journey to Solstheim led everywhere under the stars but Solstheim. Yrwe had never seemed the type to avoid his self-imposed duties, and yet though they had a ship to catch in Windhelm, Omrue was up to his knees in vampires and bogwater in Morthal.

 

But their hearths were warm, and warmer still when Omrue convinced his companion to perch in his lap.

 

He was met, of course, wish skepticism at the offer - patted at his thighs and wiggled his brows while a cool gaze swept over him.

  
  
“My armor weighs more than your entirety.”

 

“Aw, you’re just saying that to butter me up.”

 

The proprietress of Thaumaturgist’s Hut tutted them both with good nature and disappeared into the back as a very skeptical elf perched upon his knee. He was mysteriously light in a way that suggested that more weight than it seemed to the untrained eye was being balanced upon Yrwe’s feet, flat on the floor. If that were not insulting enough, Yrwe recoiled from him when he drew closer.

 

“You need to bathe.”

 

Omrue sniffed at himself. “Yeah? I think that’s just my musk.” He made another pass, and Yrwe swiftly stood.

 

“Then _I_  need to bathe, before I crawl out of my own skin.”

 

The opinion must not have been isolated to Yrwe’s sensitivities as Lami kept her distance as well. “For a nominal fee,” she muttered, waving toward the shelves, “I’ll fix you both up with a hot bath with some herbs as well.”

 

Omrue wondered why they ought to pay at all if she was so offended by their stench. But Yrwe paid graciously, and it was not long before he was pulling vampiric viscera from Yrwe’s long hair.

 

Trust an alchemist to complicate a bath with flowers. Yrwe tipped a bucket over himself to rinse first, scrubbing the worst of his filth off before he stepped into the steaming tub. Mountain flowers red and blue floated off with the ripples of his disruption, and the heady scent of lavender lulled Omrue as he begrudgingly did the same. The water was near to scalding, and he hissed to himself as he slid down behind Yrwe.

 

When he was finally able to relax, bare and bath-hot from his toes to his chest, Omrue was able to take stock of all his various aches. Yrwe’s damp head leaned back against his shoulder. They shared a sigh, Yrwe slowly drifting.

 

Rarely was he bruised, for the durability of his armor was impeccable, so all Omrue could see when he looked him over were scars and pinkening flesh. “You’ve got flowers in your hair now,” he muttered, plucking a tiny lavender bloom from the pale strands. “Like some kind of elf prince.”

 

In lieu of a response, Yrwe slipped and slid his way down until his head was submerged in the hot water. A stream of bubbles rose before he did.

Pulling himself upright again, he twisted toward Omrue, his hair a long curtain of white dotted by flowers caught like salmon in a net, his long eyelashes dripping. His mouth was wet.

 

“You look… strange.”

 

Omrue lifted his hands. “Do I?”

 

“Like…” Yrwe narrowed his eyes - tipped his head to the side. “Like some sort of… bathing orc. If you can imagine such a thing.”

 

Slowly, he shook a finger at Yrwe. “This tub was barely made for two men bathing - I’d hazard a guess that it wasn’t at all made for two men brawling. Yet you seem inclined to try.”

 

“Not at all.” Yrwe settled himself gracefully back against Omrue’s front, going slack once more. “You would never stand a chance in such close quarters.”

 

The water runs bog-cold before they finally force themselves out. Whenever Omrue lists over for a sniff, Yrwe smells freshly of flowers for the rest of the evening and into the night.

  
  
  


 

They had met in a cavern of ice, far below the ground. Yrwe had not once seen the sky in hundreds of years. And yet it was that when Omrue gazed up at the stars with Yrwe by his side, it was as pieces of a cosmic puzzle finally aligning.

  
  
  


 

Rather than traversing the north, they made their way out of Hjaalmarch and into the Pale in a southeasterly fashion. Though the journey grew more frigid and hard with each passing day, Omrue often turned down carriage rides or the purchase of a horse. He liked to feel the earth under his feet, under his own power. In this, Yrwe was a kindred soul.

 

They slept in tents when there were no solid structures to be found, and no bandit or beast lived long at the other end of Yrwe's blade.

 

Windhelm loomed in the distance like a beacon of ignorance. Omrue cared for the enclosure of its city walls even less than Markarth’s. So though the night was falling, they tugged their furs more tightly about their necks and ploughed on through wind and snow toward the harbor.

 

The shipyard was far from empty, but the sailors made haste to secure our unload their cargo, speaking in clipped tones with their haste to trundle up to the city for a warm night indoors. Once pointed in the right direction, Omrue had to grab the proper ship's captain by the scruff of his cloak to stop his dithering.

 

“Solstheim,” he grunted through the Nord’s squawking. “This the ship to take?”

 

“No - yes!”

 

Omrue gave him a little shake. “Which is it?”

 

“Yes, yes I can take you - b-but not tonight.”

 

With another shake to coax one more squeal from him, Omrue set him down. He mirrored his silent companion, folding his arms across his chest. “Tomorrow, then. When do you depart?”

 

“F-first light.”

 

Yrwe stepped forward, ignoring the captain's flinch as he pressed a sack of gold into his palm. “I hope this should suffice.”

 

“Oh. Yes, I -”

 

“First light,” Omrue crowed, grinning toothily as he clapped a hand to Yrwe's shoulder.

 

Retracing their steps to the city gates felt like a walk to the gallows. When he shared this, trudging along, Yrwe exhaled sharply through his nose with all the pomposity of an ancient aristocrat. “If only your dramatics warmed us half as much as tavern fire.”

 

“Dramatics? That's a strange thing to call my -”

 

“Halt. You, orc, and…” A Stormcloak at the gate peered at Yrwe's impassive face for a long moment. “... elf. State your business.”

 

“Getting out of the cold before our tits chip off.”

 

While the man before them seemed unimpressed, the woman a few paces away failed to stifle her snickering. The Stormcloak deflated. “Inside, then. No funny business.”

 

“None to be had,” Omrue returned, doffing an invisible cap.

 

 

 

 

The next few nights they spend upon the sea. The tossing and turning and standby of motion drives Omrue near mad, but Yrwe took to spending his time above deck, his eyes turned ever toward the northeast.

 

An argonian elbowed Omrue on their first day aboard, nodding toward the mass of hair and armor at the prow. “What manner of elf is that?”

 

“A comely one with expensive taste in gear.” When Yrwe glanced around and caught sight of them, Omrue lifted a hand and winked.

 

“If that is to your tastes,” the argonian offered, but not without a hint of pity.

 

Days at sea made Omrue restless, but Yrwe faced the looming island with an eerie sort of calm.

 

“Oughtn’t you be the one with the racing heart?” Omrue grumbled into his hair in the early morning hours of the third day. It wouldn't be long before they landed ashore, but Yrwe's palms were dry and his eyes were clear.

 

“Auri-El guides my every step,” he murmured, pressing a hand to the back of Omrue's where it lay over his ribs. “I will not falter. I could not.”

 

Omrue pondered this as he closed his eyes. “You keep your faith in Him, then, and I'll keep my faith in you.”

  


 

Solstheim was black with ash. Yrwe frowned at the darkened hills and the volcano in the distance, far far off. “It was not always like this,” he said, quiet and mostly to himself. Omrue didn't answer, munching on a cold baked ash yam as they walked.

 

_Fall of the Snow Prince_ made a home in Omrue's pack long ago, but Yrwe had never read it - neither to dispute, nor to confirm the events chronicled within. But it helps them now, leading them to the Isinfier Plains, and further on to the door of Jolgeirr Barrow.

 

Here, and finally, Yrwe stopped.

 

Within the walls of the burial mound, Omrue pressed on ahead.

 

“They buried you here,” he said, and his voice echoed off the walls. “The Nords.”

 

“Yes, I know.”

 

His legs marched as though they were made of stone. But still, he marched.

 

The tomb of the Snow Prince was… sparse. Ransacked, Omrue thought, and kept it to himself. All that remained inside of any value lay with the remains.

 

It hit Omrue like a fallen tree - he froze beside Yrwe, staring at the bleached old bones. The caved fracture in the ribs where Yrwe's jagged pink birthmark splayed like an exploded star.

 

_Fall of the Snow Prince_ \- not Omrue's copy, but an older edition, the pages stiff with disuse - lay open before the remains of the long-dead elven warrior prince.

  
  
  


 

“You look like a snow elf,” Omrue had said once, years ago under the autumnal leaves of the Rift. He fanned the flames under their cooking lunch.

 

“Yes.”

 

Yrwe took great pains toward improving his Tamrielic, but he was far from fluent. Omrue had figured he was politely encouraging him to continue, so Omrue returned his nod and carried on. “Far as I can figure a snow elf would look, anyway. They're all gone, though. Like the dwemer.”

 

Yrwe had leveled him with a severity that made Omrue's hands pause. “Something wrong?”

 

“No.”

 

“... Well. Good. Do you know of the dwemer?”

 

His eyes were hard as flint. “Yes.”

 

“And, uh… what about snow elves?”

 

The tight line of Yrwe's mouth went slack. His eyes began to thaw. “Yes.”

 

“Well… I don't know much about either. So I s’pose you'll have to teach me.”

 

“I will teach you.”

 

_That's precious,_  he'd thought, tending once more to the fire.

 

But now could he have known what was to come?

  
  
  


 

“So.”

 

Yrwe paused, his fingers hovering over the fracture of the skeleton’s ribs - the Snow Prince's ribs. His very own bones. “Speak.”

 

Omrue cocked his head to the side, pressing at the skull, and them at Yrwe.

 

“Akatosh definitely got your teeth right.”

 

Yrwe stared at his remains for a long quiet moment. “Did He?”

 

“Spot on jaw, too.”

 

Yrwe's laughter came quiet and deep, lingering at the back of his throat.

 

“Auri-El embodies perfection. Therefore, His methods and intentions are also perfect.”

 

Omrue curled a hand around Yrwe's shoulder. The chamber around them seemed to echo with its silence. The corpse of Yrwedhevuris Naravrin, the Snow Prince, had lain alone in the dark and the cold for many a hundred year, and the living incarnation of him had nearly carried on such a fate by his own whim. Omrue could not fathom it.

 

“Have you found what you’ve been seeking?”

 

Yrwe finally closed the distance, running a palm over the mortal wound. “I do not know, for nothing in particular was sought.” He stood a little straighter with the posture of a soldier. “So… Yes. I suppose I have.”

 

He lifted the spear nearby - remarkably simple in design, and likely deceptively so. It fit in his hand like the sceptre of an emperor. “Looks like a twig,” Omrue declared. The corner of Yrwe's mouth ticked up.

 

“Would you like to see if it stings the same?”

  


 

 

They bedded down underground at The Retching Netch. One look at Yrwe's fancy new armor had the local mercenary making eyes in their direction. Omrue openly lifted his coin purse and winked as he tucked it beneath his breast plate.

 

Learning how to peel Yrwe out of his new shell would take time, and learning how would take a orc far less imbibed on dunmer libations.

 

“It'll be nice to get home,” he mumbled, freeing Yrwe's hand from his new gauntlet. Yrwe allowed it, and made no move to help when Omrue struggled to be delicate with the other.

 

“Yes,” he agreed, quiet. Contemplative. “Thank you for accompanying me on the journey. It would have been lonesome without you.”

 

“Nah,” he snorted, stumbling a little on wobbly legs. “You’d’ve had Akatosh.”

 

“He does not speak half as much as you do.”

 

When Omrue got him into bed, Yrwe welcomed the hot kisses he pressed to his throat.

 

“Are you quite sure you are up to the task,” he asked, terribly full of cheek for someone as naked as he was. Omrue burped.

 

“Yeah. Probably.”

 

He palmed at Yrwe's cock, caught up in a yawn. Magnanimous Yrwe gentled him away, drawing his arm up about his waist instead. “There will be time enough for that sober.”

  
  
  
  
  


 

 

The first advance he ever made was well received, and more besides. He’d found himself hard between Yrwe’s thighs, slick with fragrant potion, Yrwe’s gasps poorly muffled by the wall he’d been pressed against. Omrue pinned him with his hips again, again, mouth hot and wet against a snow white shoulder blade.

 

He couldn’t do much with his mouth, given his teeth and the delicate nature of elves and their flesh, but Yrwe seemed to like them anyway. So Omrue had drawn the heavy curtain of Yrwe’s hair aside and scraped his tusks over the nape of his neck until he was coming with a shout.

 

He had had to wash the walls after, but in the moment it was far less pressing a matter when compared to the need thrumming through his body.

 

And after, with Omrue’s limbs flung over and between Yrwe’s in the little bed in his hut, Omrue was heavy-lidded from the hand softly skating down his chest.

 

“What kind of dowry would I have to offer a prince?”

 

He knew the response forthcoming, so he smirked when Yrwe corrected: “I was not that sort of prince.”

 

“More of a title,” Omrue continued with him, their voices in unison. Yrwe exhaled sharply through his nose with his personal mix of exasperation and amusement. His hand came to rest over Omrue’s heart.

 

“Be you steadfast and honorable. This is the dowry I demand.”

 

Omrue closed his eyes, and didn’t think too deeply about the hows and the whys of holding an incarnation of an ancient elven warrior prince. Or about sucking him off until he wept. “How about some chickens? I think I have a goat around here somewhere too.”

 

“I will take the honor and the goat and nothing less.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> I'm writing a high fantasy comic about a wandering bard! [Check it out from the beginning HERE!](https://bardbouquet.tumblr.com/post/179195348759/a-dwarven-heirloom-a-blade-in-the-dark-and-a)
> 
> “I have swallowed an iron moon.” — Chelsea Wolfe
> 
> My Tumblr: [wardencommando](http://wardencommando.tumblr.com/).  
> Details about fic reque$t$ [here!](http://wardencommando.tumblr.com/post/175675914506)  
> 


End file.
